Total pages in book: 295
Estimated words: 282090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1410(@200wpm)___ 1128(@250wpm)___ 940(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 282090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1410(@200wpm)___ 1128(@250wpm)___ 940(@300wpm)
“Yet,” Imogen says, yanking the door to the tunnel open. “We’re not fast enough yet. But we will be. Let’s go.”
***
“It’s weird as hell to be all the way up here,” Ridoc says from my left as we sit in the first Battle Brief of the academic year later that day, looking down at where the first-years take up more than a third of the room.
It’s standing-room only in the giant, tiered classroom for the third-years behind us. This is the only place in the quadrant besides the gathering hall designed to hold all the rider cadets, but it will take a few weeks of death rolls before we can all sit in front of the stories-tall map of the Continent.
It reminds me of the one in Brennan’s briefing room in Aretia. He thinks we only have six months until venin challenge the wards, and yet there’s not a single indication on this map.
“View is a little better,” Nadine remarks from his other side.
“Definitely easier to see the higher portions of the map,” Rhiannon agrees at my right, taking out her supplies and setting them on the desktop before her. “Did you have a good run this morning?”
“I’m not sure I’d call it good, but it was effective.” I put my notebook and pen on the table, wincing at the pain shooting up my shins, and reinforce my shields. Keeping them up at all times is harder than I thought, and Tairn loves to remind me when they slip.
“Look at all those first-years with their quills and ink,” Ridoc remarks, leaning forward to look down at the underclassmen.
“There once was a time we didn’t have lesser magic to power ink pens,” Nadine retorts. “Stop acting superior.”
“We are superior.” He grins.
Nadine rolls her eyes, and I can’t fight my smile.
Professor Devera walks down the narrow set of stone steps on our left that follows the tiers of seats, her favorite longsword strapped to her back. Her black hair is a little shorter since I saw her last, and there’s a fresh, jagged wound along the rich mahogany skin of her biceps.
“I heard she spent last week with the Southern Wing,” Rhiannon says quietly.
My stomach tenses and I wonder what, if anything, she saw.
“Welcome to your first Battle Brief,” Professor Devera announces. I tune out as she gives the same speech as last year and warns the first-years not to be surprised if the third-years are called into service early to man the mid-guard posts or shadow the forward wings. Her gaze rakes over them before she raises her attention to the seconds, her eyes crinkling for a heartbeat as she flashes a proud smile at me before continuing upward as she explains how necessary it is for us to understand the current affairs of our borders.
“This is also the only class where you will not only answer to a rider as your professor, but a scribe, as well,” she finishes, lifting her hand toward the stairs.
Colonel Markham lifts the corner of his cream-colored robes as he descends, heading for the recessed floor of the lecture hall.
My muscles lock, and I fight the urge to flick one of my daggers into his traitorous back. He knows everything. He has to. He wrote the fucking textbook on Navarrian history that all riders are taught from. And until last year, I was his star pupil, the one he’d handpicked to succeed in the Scribe Quadrant.
“You’ll respect Colonel Markham as you would any other professor,” Professor Devera says. “He is the foremost authority at Basgiath when it comes to all matters not only of our history but current events as well. Some of you may not know this, but information from the front is actually received at Basgiath before it’s sent to the king in Calldyr, so you’ll be hearing it first here.”
I glance down the tiers to where Aaric sits beside Sloane in the row with our squad’s first-years, and to his credit, he doesn’t flinch or even fidget in his seat. One good look, and Markham will know who he is, but with that haircut, if he keeps his head down, he’s got a shot at blending in.
At least until his father sounds the alarm that he’s missing from his gold-plated bed in Calldyr.
“First discussion point,” Markham says when he reaches the floor of the hall, his silver eyebrows knitting. “There were not one but two attacks on our border by drifts of gryphons in the past week.”
A murmur goes through the hall.
“The first,” Professor Devera says as she lifts her hand and uses lesser magic to move one of the flag markers from the side of the map to the border we share with the Braevick province of Poromiel, “was near the village of Sipene, high in the Esben Mountains.”
An hour’s flight from Montserrat.